Upon basic inspection, Derek Dooley admits most wouldn’t see many similarities between his late father and his boss.

The legendary Georgia coach and athletics director Vince Dooley was, perhaps, less associated with sideline rage than Nick Saban. But they were friends going back a few decades, and Tuesday, Derek Dooley accepted the Nick Saban Legacy Award on behalf of his father after his October 2022 death.

Now an analyst at Alabama, Derek Dooley help facilitate a friendship between Saban and his father. Speaking before the awards show Tuesday in Birmingham, the younger Dooley reflected on their first meeting and how the friendship grew over the years.

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It all began when Saban hired Derek Dooley to be his tight ends coach at LSU in 2000. His father hadn’t yet fully retired at Georgia after stepping away from football coaching in 1988 after 25 years leading the Bulldogs.

“I was, of course, young and aspiring and dad was still the athletics director at Georgia,” Derek Dooley said Tuesday. “And neither of them are known for their ability to converse. It’s probably not their greatest strength unless it was work related — recruiting or something.”

Derek Dooley then went on to reenact the interaction between the current and future legends of college football coaching.

“So when I brought him in to introduce him, I kinda had to be the mediator,” Derek Dooley said. “You know, ‘Dad, Coach … yeah, yeah, OK good.’ And ‘Coach, you know, Dad did … yeah, good. Good to see you.’ That was about it but over time, they became really good friends. And, of course, spent a lot of time at the lake together. I know Dad was really appreciative of Coach calling him periodically.”

The lake would be Lake Burton where both owned homes. A 2010 AL.com story chronicled the Dooley/Saban friendship and the Georgia delegation’s influence in steering the Sabans to Lake Burton.

Derek Dooley would work under Saban for seven years, first at LSU and then with the Miami Dolphins before Louisiana Tech hired him as its head coach in 2007. The across-the-lake neighbors remained friends throughout.

“There are only a few people in the world that have the moral character — the moral high ground that he made decisions and lived his life,” Saban said of Vince Dooley on Tuesday. “So, I’m only saddened he couldn’t be here tonight because he was a good friend.”

It was a family affair at Lake Burton.

“In the summers, we have dinner with each other,” Derek Dooley’s mother and Vince Dooley’s widow Barbara Dooley told AL.com in 2010. “We go to his house, they come to our house, we sit on the porch and talk football. We’ve had a good relationship with him now for 10 years.”

Of course, there were the three years as rivals when Derek Dooley coached Tennessee from 2010-12. His dad fully retired as Georgia’s AD in 2004 so he was able to spend more time watching his son’s teams in Knoxville.

After losing that job, working as an assistant for the Dallas Cowboys, University of Missouri and New York Giants, Derek Dooley returned to Saban’s staff last February as an analyst.

Asked on Tuesday if his dad and Saban were similar, Derek Dooley thought a moment.

“You wouldn’t think that if you met them,” he said. “They’re very different in some of their approaches but I know the core of what they believe and what it takes to build a championship team. It’s probably why I gravitated to Coach Saban so quickly and loved being with him because philosophically, it was everything I was raised on. He believed in having a tough, hard-nosed team that believed in defense. He believed in developing a mental toughness to win it in the fourth quarter.

A lot’s changed since Vince Dooley retired from coaching in 1988 having captured the 1980 national title, but the fundamentals remain.

“It doesn’t matter how offenses and defenses evolved, those things stayed the same,” Derek Dooley said. “It was nothing really foreign to me when I went to work for Coach (Saban) for the first time. It kinda felt like this is what it’s supposed to be.”

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.